Pollen Study Points to Drought as Culprit in Bronze Age Mystery

TEL AVIV — More than 3,200 years ago, life was abuzz in and around what
is now this modern-day Israeli metropolis on the shimmering
Mediterranean shore.

To the north lay the mighty Hittite empire; to the south, Egypt was
thriving under the reign of the great Pharaoh Ramses II. Cyprus was a
copper emporium. Greece basked in the opulence of its elite Mycenaean
culture, and Ugarit was a bustling port city on the Syrian coast. In the
land of Canaan, city states like Hazor and Megiddo flourished under
Egyptian hegemony. Vibrant trade along the coast of the eastern
Mediterranean connected it all.

Yet within 150 years, according to experts, the old world lay in ruins.

Experts have long pondered the cause of the crisis that led to the
collapse of civilization in the Late Bronze Age, and now believe that by
studying grains of fossilized pollen they have uncovered the cause....